


It lingers.

by tillloveburnusall



Category: WAYV
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Brief mentions of Overdoses, Description of Abstinence Crisis, Drug Addiction, Heavy Discussions about Drugs, I don't think is as bad as the tags are making look like?, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Discussions, Yang Yang-Centric, Yangyang and Mark are an underground rap duo, but better safe than sorry, read the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25317130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tillloveburnusall/pseuds/tillloveburnusall
Summary: People only tell you about the bad things drugs do to you, but you know what? They are really fucking cool, they make all the fake happines flush down the toilet and replace it with vibrant flashes of lights. There’s no bad things in the world, just good, real happiness that fulfills you.Now I’ll tell you the real downside of the drugs, you have this experience just once, just the first time, never again and then, you can’t stop looking for it.You get addicted.
Relationships: Liu Yang Yang/Qian Kun
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	It lingers.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm warning that the words that you're going to read can be upsetting and in some cases even triggering, read the tags again and be sure that you can handle. 
> 
> The narrative can be confusing, so I'll ask you to be atentive, it was wrote in first person which means that will be parts where it may sound like I'm defending drugs so I'll ask once again, read EVERYTHING first, you'll see that this is not my intention at all. 
> 
> Some parts are not precisously described because I didn't want all the thirteen year old kids here knowing how to use heroin and stuff like that nor did I want you all to know what exactly feels like to have an overdose. 
> 
> Well, monsters notes apart, hope you enjoy!

Before we start, I would like to say that at some point, things changed. 

When I was seventeen, before everything, before I met Mark Lee, before I got into all this stuff, I always felt like I was happy, the world wasn't the best place but I definitely could find a way to live a good life, right? We all know this is the most important for most people, to have a comfortable, good life. But what if the feeling never comes? What if you're just always at edge? As if what the others are seeing is not the same you see? 

People only tell you about the bad things drugs do to you, but you know what? They are really fucking cool, they make all the fake happines flush down the toilet and replace it with vibrant flashes of lights. There’s no bad things in the world, just good, real happiness that fulfills you. 

Now I’ll tell you the real downside of the drugs, you have this experience just once, just the first time, never again and then, you can’t stop looking for it. 

You get addicted.

-1-

The worst thing about smashing LSD when you’re already on abstinence is that everything becomes really fucking hard.

“Do you have a card?” 

“Card? Me?” Mark’s voice is trembling and I stop, only for a second, to take a good look at his face. His pupils are small and he looks kinda manic, but not too far from how Mark usually is when we get high so I go back to the pills in front of me. 

“Ipod, then? Will do.”

Mark shrugs, fishing the object from his back pocket and throwing it in my direction. Sober Mark would never be this carelessly, but they are completely different personas. For one, sober Mark hates himself for offering me pills on the first night we met, stoned Mark shares his syringes with me. 

I can’t translate the real magnitude of the minutes between being on the verge of having a heart attack till the moment that the smoke hits my lung. It burns all the extremities of my body and my knees almost fails me. 

But I take a deep drag and everything is fine again. 

Mark pulls me into a hug and I laugh, because his hair is tickling my skin and he laughs along, and I think that it must be because he’s hearing my thoughts so I think about banana smoothies, because Mark hates banana smoothies but he just keeps laughing and I can’t understand but it doesn't matter, because Mark’s hair is tickling my skin and he must be hearing my thoughts because I’m really fucking happy right now, and so he is.

-2-

Performing is cool, I guess. I don’t really know anymore, I just know drugs. 

Nah, just kidding. Performing is having everyone around hyping you up, idolizing you, drinking each part of you, taking anything and everything you have to offer.

Performing with Mark is even better because he’s just like me, he’s there, on stage, and nothing else matters, bills, college, disappointed eyes from your parents, work. No, it’s our world, our people and I couldn't be more proud of it.

Mark doesn't care what time it is when I call him, if my verses are good he’ll be knocking on my door in less than one hour and we’ll work on it till our body can’t support us anymore. Then, in the morning, he will get me coffee, because he feels guilty, and drive me to the local university, because he’s nothing better to do.

And sometimes, Mark kisses me. 

He’s feeling for Johnny and it’s pretty stupid because Johnny is Mark’s dealer and we all know how this type of love story ends, so I don’t mind when he kisses me because with me at least his tears are not only that, tears.

-3-

I’m completely out of orbit when I meet Xuxi for the first time. 

He is like this stupidly tall dude that smiles too much, and the first thing that I think is that the mushrooms growing on the top of his head are really cute. My chest hurts just from staring at him and for some strange reason, I can’t breathe properly when he puts his hand on my forehead. 

Xuxi is a nurse, and I was having an overdose. 

I wake up four days later, and maybe my first impression on Huang Xuxi wasn’t the best but when he comes inside my room to check on me and I try to bribe him into getting me some morphine thinking that he’s just an intern, I can guarantee you that the second one was even worse. 

Another thing about drugs, they destroy all the people around you. 

The second time I wake up, dad is sleeping on the armchair beside my bed and there’s this moment, you know? This moment where everything slows down and I just… stop.

My mom left us when I was nine. I mean, she left dad, she still comes to get me on all my birthdays since I was eleven and she got her own apartment. And I love mom, I really do. But it’s not the same thing. Mom and her girlfriend don’t know my favorite cereal, they didn’t help me grow a garden, they didn’t wait for Santa with me till I fell asleep. They are not dad. 

And I look to him now, head pending to the side, black circles around his eyes and I know that I fucked up. It just kind of dawns on me what I’m doing. Not to myself, to him. 

I went to a lot of group therapy, you know? Because of the divorce and everything, and they always have this same discourse “do it for yourself”. Fuck that. 

For myself I want a cocktail that will make me see heaven, doesn’t matter how harsh it will be the fall, I want those hours that feel like seconds, I want the rhapsody of being so high that my body and mind are distinctive things. 

But I can’t. I’m tied by those who love me, I’m forced to take care of myself, to drink water, to not mix shit when the LSD effect is fading and the only thing I can think about is how rolling down the stairs sounds much better than walking to my apartment. 

You won’t get anywhere by “ doing for yourself”, maybe at some point things change, they always do, but when you still think you can fly, someone else needs to exist, so you fear the fall. 

-4-

Before I go to rehab, Mark sends me a message. 

_Sorry, Yangles._

I don’t answer, not because I don’t want to, it’s just that they don’t let you stay with your phone in rehab. It doesn’t really matter, I have absolutely no idea what I’d say to Mark. I feel guilty for doing this to him, he's a good guy and doesn’t deserve the weight of having more this one on his back.

A resume of what a day in rehab is, in case you hadn't experienced first-hand: breakfast, individual therapy, lunch, speacilized therapy, exercises, group therapy, “fun time”, the twelve steps bullshit, dinner, reflexion (whatever the fuck this mean) and then, sleep. 

It sucks, and I won’t be the judge of whether it helps or not but I will judge the food, it tastes like crap.

I meet Hendery in my second week, during group therapy.

“My name is Guanheng and I am an addict.” He’s taller than me. Not a big deal, just felt worth mentioning.

“Hello, Guanheng.” We say in unison. Sooyoung, Heroin I guess, mumbles something that sounds like "shut the fuck up" but I'm not sure, she's never in a good mood.

“Hm, Oxycontin.” Guanheng moves his hands a lot. One minute they are on his lap, the other on his hair. “They made a mistake, with my… Medication, when I was young.”

“I showed some weird behaviour issues so they changed my psychiatrist and tried correcting the mistake but it was too late, I guess.” Guanheng sweats a lot too, bites his lips repeatedly and avoids eye-contact or looking directly at the light. “Since I can remember, I have OCD. They should have sent me to therapy, but they didn’t, they prescribed me meds instead.”

There’s scratches at the back of his hands, human nails, and they are fresh.

“Sometimes, when I’m really angry…” Scattered breathing. “I wonder why they gave me meds.”

Guanheng doesn’t make it to dinner that night, but he does come to breakfast the next morning, pale and shivering but there. I sit next to him.

-5-

"Is this Harry Potter?" Hendery asks me, hovering over my shoulder. 

"Yeah."

It's my second month here, they say I'm doing really well, but I know that it is not true, I had three abstinence crises only this week. 

"It's my favourite book!" My cute rehab bestie says, his eyes getting bigger as he tries to read the book on my hand.

Hendery though, is getting better, his last crisis was two months ago and he's doing well with the twelve steps. Joy told me that she heard some of the docs saying that they were going to release him sooner, I don't really know what this means in a place like this but I'm happy for him.

"Is lame as fuck." I smile at him, and our faces are so close that I can feel his breath fanning over my face. "It fits you."

Hendery makes my life easier and I can't even organize the words correctly to tell you how much it hurts when he leaves. Theoretically, you shouldn't make friends on rehab, actually, they explicitly recommend that you don't. It conflicts the process or something.

But Hendery makes things bearable, is not just "someone understands me", is also "this person makes me laugh" and "he's really cute".

"You helped me a lot, you know?" Hendery says, before throwing another shirt inside his duffle bag. "I mean it."

"How did I help you?" I ask. "With my misplaced sarcasm or relative non cooperation?"

Hendery laughs, and it sounds so carefree, so pure. And I want to laugh like that too, I really do, but the most I can do is a shaky laugh. 

"You made me feel normal." He hugs me, and I don't cry, but I want to. A lot. "See you around, Yangie."

-6-

The day I’m discharged is weird.

After Hendery I didn't try to get closer to anyone else and nobody deemed my presence interesting enough to approach me either, which, if I'm being honest, I was completely fine with. The days were slow and nights quiet and rushed but I had something to do, a goal to accomplish. Now, standing in front of the gates while dad thanks the staff feels… Well, weird.

I have absolutely no idea what I should do. I think about calling Mark but dad is humming songs and already hugged me twice, always telling me how proud of me he is and I don't want to risk this, so I delete his number.

And I get some chocolates too, or maybe burgers, can't remember right now, but is something that smells nice and doesn't taste as much.

Dad smiles and laughs and I do the same. But I don't feel like laughing, at all.

-7-

I'm bored. 

There's no more gigs with Mark in the middle of dawn, no more pills that make my tongue tingle or liquids on syringes that will go straight into my blood system, putting me up all night. 

It's hard, at first, so fucking hard to see good things. My nights are long, days an eternity and I spend most of the time fantasizing about the day dad will finally let me live alone. I tell myself that I'm fine and I just want to have some privacy again, but I know the truth and dad knows too.

I got a job. 

Bookstore. It's simple, methodical and keeps my mind off things. Thriller in the west section, first shelf, on the top. Drama in the south section, the entire fourth shelf. And so on. I like it.

There's two other guys that work there too, Dejun and Sicheng, they're cool and always invite me to have lunch with them. I accept occasionally but most of the times I go home to have lunch with dad. 

I get my apartment in October.

Two years. I've been clean for two years. It's easier to see things that I can be happy about. I sleep better, my hands rarely shake nowadays and my headaches are not as biting anymore.

Dejun helps me move in, Sicheng teaches me how to make my own food and they sleep with me for the first night, a sleepover of sorts just with a lot of horror movies and alcoholic drinks; for them, I don't drink anymore.

I sleep in the middle, Sicheng's arm around my waist and Dejun's breathing knocking against the back of my neck. 

It feels nice, and for a second I just lay there, frozen, waiting for the moment that the effect will fade and the sadness and depression will take over me. 

It doesn't happen, there's only warmth, real and human warmth. 

-8-

Monday didn’t start well.

I can’t tell you what was the trigger, maybe a random tweet? Or I saw something? I can’t remember. 

At first it was just dizziness, things suddenly went out of focus and my balance was worse than ever, but well, it was bearable. Then, on wednesday, I keep dropping things and Mrs. Bae let me leave earlier because I’m sweating and pale. 

On friday I can’t walk straight.

I wake up and my head feels three times heavier than when I went to sleep, the room is spinning and everything is so bright. I try to stand up, but I can’t. It’s like the axis of the planet changed and no one warned my body about it. 

When I finally can move my limbs, comes the mental confusion. 

I take a frozen chicken from the freezer and put it inside the oven for no reason. I open drawers and then I forget why I did that, later I try to fry eggs with detergent. 

Then I go down to the garage and I know that I’m not feeling ok so I try using the bike, but I can’t remember where I left it so I go to the car. Terrible idea.

My hands shake around the steering wheel like an electric drill and while I know what I’m doing, it feels like I don’t. The sweat running down my back is stressing and there's too much light in the world right now. 

It starts like a murmur in the back of my mind while I’m organizing the books in alphabetical order.

_I’m on abstinence, and there is something that will help me get rid of this, something easy, fast and that won’t bother no one._

I shake my head, because I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be like this. Not again.

I avoid Sicheng and Dejun as much as I can, but I feel like their eyes are on me all the time. Worse, I feel like all the clients, staff, everybody is looking at me and I can’t stand it, but I do. I finish my shift and I close the store and I go back to my car. 

And the garage is silent, no clatter, no buzzing of engines, just silence that makes me panic because I don’t want to be alone. So I pick up my phone and the horror takes over me when I realise that I still remember the numbers of all my old dealers. 

It terrorizes me to think that maybe, all this time that things felt right and nice, it was just a cover. That I didn’t actually got better. That I’m just pretending, that this is just some other type of drug that I've been using to masquerade what I truly fear. 

That there is no Liu Yangyang without pills.

Dad says that I called him crying and that Irene was the one that found me, unconscious, when she came to get some papers she forgot. 

She says that I can take my time to get better and I'll still have a job, that I don’t have to worry and I’m so relieved because I genuinely enjoy working there. Sicheng and Dejun visit me one week after the incident, and for a moment I consider not letting them come up but I do, eventually. 

And they don’t pretend they have no idea what happened to me but they also don’t act like it was just the most absurd thing in the world, like mom and grandpa did. 

There’s always the lingering feeling that I can have a relapse. That one day I might just call someone and they’ll pick, and I’ll be back on the same cycle, but that’s it, and maybe I’ll never move past this but I will learn how to live with it and all I can do is hope that it will be good enough.

-9-

Kun is a musician. 

He’s my new neighbor, that also happens to be a cellist and we kind of get along. Kun is awful at doing laundry and I hate cooking so we make an arrangement of sorts. 

At first I’m not sure whether I should get involved or not, music is still connected to drugs inside my head, the rasping of a bass almost tastes like Codeine on my mouth and the rustling of the drums is bitter as LSD pills. 

But Kun is not like that, he’s not for the heavy, ‘rushed’ melodies. Some days he just sits on the floor of my apartment and whistles Twilight’s theme song, others he brings his cello and plays Shostakovich for the whole day.

I kiss him on a friday, it’s winter and we are waiting in Target’s queue. 

There’s nothing romantic in the situation itself, the woman behind us is calling her husband a “lazy asshole” and a child is crying their lungs out somewhere, but Kun’s cheeks are rosy and the tip of his nose is red and I never felt so enamored before, so I kiss him. 

And he kisses me back.

-10-

There’s something about walking on the streets covered by snow two weeks before Christmas that makes me feel like a child again.

The creaky sounds that it makes when I do as much as take a step forward, how some snowflakes go through the several layers of clothes that Kun made me wear this morning, touching my skin with tenderness. 

And the whole world is white, from the benches to the top of the buildings, all of them are covered on thick tiers of mixed ice crystals with liquid water and fallen leaves and it’s stunningly beautiful, sacred moments protected by the brief months of winter. 

I’m so distracted that it takes some time for me to notice that someone is calling my name. I gasp in surprise when I recognize the person walking towards me. 

“Ten!”

Ten was one of Mark’s closest friends, they were childhood friends and Ten was the one that made sure Mark would get home without any bruises when he was so high he could barely walk straight. It’s nice to see him again.

“Geez, who are you running from, kid?” He asks, hands on his knees as he gasps, searching for the air used to run in cold weather.

“I was distracted, dude. Having a reverie about Christmas and all that.”

Ten laughs and I feel like I’m back to the old days, but it’s not heavy, it doesn’t make me nervous or scared, it’s just saudonist. I miss laughing about some stupid thing Ten said, or how the three of us used to go to McDonalds for french fries because Mark is vegan and we liked to make him feel included. 

It’s the first time I remember this, moments that we weren’t just two addicted guys with their worried friend, actually it feels like for a long time, I have forgotten about Ten’s existence. 

“I could see.” Ten answers, smiling. And I’m about to ask, because the worry has been killing me, but he beats me. “He’s fine.”

“Called me three months ago, saying that he was tired. And I tell you this, Yangles, he scared me to death.” There’s a new piercing on Ten’s earlobe that spikes a memory in my head, and if it wasn’t so important I would've interrupted him. “I thought he was going to jump out of the window or something like that.”

“Mark is not like this.” I say, like a contemplation. 

Ten nods, “Yeah, he’s in rehab now. He comes home on friday.”

“I’m glad.” I say, and finally hearing about Mark makes me feel like gravity is not present anymore, I’m so happy that I could float. It sounds childish but it is what it is. “How long are you two together?”

Mark is the romantic type, you know? He’s all about giving everything that he is for the person he loves (hence, why he and Johnny would never work together) but he also enjoys the small gestures and he has this thing with earrings, different colors for different people. It made him look like a hippie but I guess he didn’t care much.

Dark blue for Taeyong, his brother, black for me, purple for Ten and red for whoever he was in love with. I kept mine in a small box, along with old pictures and other small gifts, Taeyong somehow transformed the earring in a necklace (not sure if he still uses it in the same way, though, it’s been some time after all), Ten used as an earring and the red one Mark kept with him, saying that he only would gift it when he was sure it was meant to be.

And now, making a pair with the round purple piercing, there’s a red earring in Ten’s earlobe. 

Ten blushes, “One year.”

I laugh, not shakily, not strained, just a simple laugh. “I’m happy for you, man.”

“Gotta go, Yangles.” Ten says, looking warily at his watch. “Taeyong came for Christmas and he took over my kitchen, he’s like a dictator, I swear.”

I hug him, smiling when I can smell the usual aroma of body wash and fennel shampoo. Some things never change. “I still have the same number, call me when he gets home.”

“Me too, It’s really good to see you again, kid.” 

I stand there, watching until Ten’s figure disappears in the horizon, and I stay there until my phone buzzes in my pocket.

“Hello?”

_“For God’s sake, Yangyang, where the hell is the flour?”_

“You’re worried about flour? When I’m out here freezing to death?”

My hands shake sometimes, and some days, I don’t want to talk at all. Some days, I feel like this world is not _my_ world and that I should get out of it, because for some of us, it doesn't matter how much you want to move on, the feeling is still there.

It lingers.

_“Well, fast you get the flour, the faster you come home, right?”_

“You hate me.”

_“I will, if you don’t get the flour.”_

But then, I realise when Kun kisses my forehead, or when Sicheng calls me to play games with him and Dejun comes to watch old tv shows with me, this world won’t be mine, neither it won’t be theirs, but I can live here, not always a good and comfortable life, but here. 

_“Come back home and I’ll warm you.”_

It’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This had a happy ending because I believe on them and I think that's what makes things move on, but If I had to give a more sober note, I would give this advice: Don't get into romantic relationships with people that are addicted. I know this may sound contradictory because of the story but Ten and Mark are a different case, Ten knew Mark since they were children, he falls in love with him before all this, it's not the same.
> 
> And of course addicts can change, but let them change first, don't get romantically attached to someone that has their life in the hands of chemicals, it won't help any of you.
> 
> But well, a stranger in the internet won't tell you what to do, so just take this as what it is, an advice.
> 
> If you want to discuss how my writing only gets worse: [twitter](https://twitter.com/heathown/)


End file.
